Premier Industrial Systems Integrator, UL-Certified Automation & Controls Firm

Full Editorial Writeup

This is a Midwestern industrial systems integrator that designs and builds custom control systems, plantwide SCADA solutions, and proprietary OEM equipment packages for industrial and infrastructure clients. The operation runs out of an 18,000-square-foot facility and includes an in-house UL508A/698A-certified panel assembly shop, which means the firm controls both the engineering and the physical manufacturing of the control panels it deploys. With 22 employees and roughly $5.04 million in revenue against $671K of SDE, this is a real project-based engineering business, not a lifestyle shop.

The company serves industrial and municipal/environmental infrastructure markets, the kind of clients who need automation to keep plants running and cannot easily rip and replace a system that has been custom-built around their processes. Management leans on a library of reusable core software and deep process expertise, which creates genuine switching costs and lets the team win repeat work from institutional accounts. Notably, all of this pipeline has been generated through word-of-mouth and technical credibility, with no dedicated sales force ever employed.

The founders are retiring, and the pitch is that key accounts are institutional rather than founder-dependent. That claim is the whole ballgame in diligence. If the relationships and the engineering knowledge truly sit with the 22-person team and the software library rather than in the founders' heads, this is a clean transferable platform. If not, a buyer is paying 3.58x for a business whose brain is walking out the door.